[Matplotlib-users] Agg backend in Windows

[Dominique O. <do...@da...>]

Just wanted to signal some path issues with the current
Windows installer. I have looked in the mailing list, but
haven't seen anyone having the same problem.

In both Windows 2000 and XP, installation of Matplotlib 0.50
results in the following directory hierarchy in my main Python
directory c:\Python23\Lib\site-packages (Enthought Edition):

  FontTools/
     fontTools/
        sstruct.py
        ttLib/

When i try to import the Agg backend:

    import matplotlib
    matplotlib.use( 'Agg' )
    from matplotlib.matlab import *

it says it cannot import 'fontTools' (lowercase f, uppercase T).
Changing the name of the top directory (FontTools) to 'fontTools'
doesn't solve it of course, since what it is looking for is the
innermost one. Hence i must move the 'fontTools' directory one
level up. Next, it can import ttLib, scans my TTFPATH, but breaks
down (after litterally one zillion messages) saying that 'module'
has no attribute 'SFNTReader'. It is in fact trying to import
sfnt and is stuck in the __init__() of Class TTFont. Drastically
reducing my TTFPATH, i see that the error is in fact coming from
the fact that it cannot import module 'sstruct' in sfnt.py.

That stuns me. A 'from fontTools import sstruct' would do. How
comes Python isn't looking recursively into directories? I guess
moving everything to the top level isn't a good idea. Also,
still in sfnt.py, the 'import struct' works, but i have no clue
where it finds this one; a search was unsuccessful. Anyhow,
including 'c:\Python23\fontTools' into the PYTHONPATH solves it
but i thought directories would be parsed recursively.

Also, can you only use savefig() with the Agg backend? show()
isn't popping any window.

As they told me to at SuSE, i'm having a lot of fun.

Dominique